Sign Me Up for ROWE

The New York Times has an article about wasting time, and I wasted time reading it, and I'm wasting time writing about it. What are you going to do about it, huh?

Let's look at the stats from the piece:

American workers, on average, spend 45 hours a week at work, but describe 16 of those hours as “unproductive,” according to a study by Microsoft. America Online and Salary.com, in turn, determined that workers actually work a total of three days a week, wasting the other two. And Steve Pavlina, whose Web site (stevepavlina.com) describes him as a “personal development expert” and who keeps incremental logs of how he spends each working day, urging others to do the same, finds that we actually work only about 1.5 hours a day. “The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m.,” he writes, “and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m.”

And this:

The average professional workweek has expanded steadily over the last 10 years, according to the Center for Work Life Policy, and logging 70-plus hours is now the norm at the top. And there are those of us who work even when we are at home, driving or worse.

Okay, so we are working more hours and wasting plenty of 'em. I blame the dot.com boom. Thanks to the tech companies, we can wear khakis and collared shirts instead of suits and ties, but we have to work more hours. Geeks are obsessive and obsession means working nonstop for many hours. Just ask the folks at EA Games working 65 hours a week. What a dream job, huh? Advertising was like that. You're working long hours, but hey, you're in the glamorous advertising biz.

What happened to 9 to 5? And what happened to the three-martini lunch hour? Now alcohol is verboten and fun is a birthday cake every month. Except advertising, in which they have beer blast Fridays, but they need the young ones drunk so they won't question the salary disparities between the senior staff and the assistants who do all the work.

Unfortunately, people have lives outside of the office. All that wasted time is time spent on your actual life: bills, e-mails to love ones, keeping up with the news. But the article gives hope with ROWE—results only work environment. From the article:

There workers can come in at four or leave at noon, or head for the movies in the middle of the day, or not even show up at all. It’s the work that matters, not the method. And, not incidentally, both output and job satisfaction have jumped wherever ROWE is tried.

Really, all one can say to that is "duh!"

Build It and They Will Lynch Your Ass

My God, a whole lotta stuff to blog about. First thing:

In the New Yorker, there is an amusing tidbit about tee-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" that Gehry himself likes and buys to give to friends. What caught my eye was this line:

“Yeah,” [Gehry] said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary..."

When one is a child, does one imagine a candlelight vigil being held against you when you grow up? Who has such passion against architecture? Apparently we do. When Jasper O'Farrell designed Market Street here in San Francisco, he was almost lynched. I pulled this next quotation off of Wikipedia, but I have read it before in other histories of S. F. so I can vouch for its veracity. It comes from a book called Forgotten Pioneers by T.F. Pendergast:

"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."

Ooh, tough crowd. The Transamerica Building is iconic. It's hard to think of downtown S.F. without its pointy little head, but even the great Herb Caen was against it...until he got used to it. We all have to share this space here on earth, so you better not ruffle feathers. But in not ruffling you have some pretty lame architecture. The square boxes of glass and concrete, the international style, is everywhere. I suppose it is cheap and easy and stable but so very dull. When the Art Deco buildings peek out from beneath the behemoth skyscrapers, they resemble Cinderella, outshining her ugly stepsisters. So I wish we had more weird Gehry type of buildings. Same old argument I guess: More beauty please, even if it is weird beauty.

So Ann Coulter and a Priest Walk Into a Gay Bar...

I'd like to think that comedy and politics are like oil and water, but that's not a correct similie. Comedians have always found a rich vein of comedy in politics. But politicos are not funny. Watching a politician interviewed on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report is fun because you're seeing professional comedians riff during an interview. But while the politician is trying to spin or look good to younger viewers, they mostly look uncomfortable. You might get lucky and see a politico brought down a peg or two if Stewart of Colbert are in a devilish mood, but it's nothing illuminating.

President Bush cracks jokes all the time; there are just not funny. At all. Most of the time, his jokes are surreal, having no apparent reference. But those folks at his extremely-inclusive rallies laugh like he was a sharpest wit in the room. Here's one quotation:

"I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck. That's a pretty cool first name, isn't it, Mayo. Pass the Mayo."

I think people laugh because he is the POTUS. Have you ever laughed at your boss' joke and then walked away wondering why you laughed? There is an inborn need to please your superiors, which means laughing at unfunny jokes. If Bush was a stranger at a barbeque and made a joke like that he would be met with an awkward silence.

Comedy definitely does not mix with ideology. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter say they are making jokes, but to have insults rise above pettiness, they have to be funny. Calling someone a femi-nazi or a fag isn't really funny for anyone over twelve. Playing on someone's fear and hate doesn't make for wit. The picture above comes from a right-wing tee-shirt company. Nuke the Moon? Tee-shirt jokes, like bumper stickers are not that funny.

And it's not just the right-wing either. I once spent a dull night watching a left-wing feminist comedy troop. Not funny. At all. You have to be a comedian before any ideology. I think Jon Stewart senses this; when his audience clearly hates the right-wing blowhard, he keeps them in line, avoiding easy jokes that his lefty audience would love. He senses that once you give yourself to ideology it becomes funny only to the true believers, and even then they are laughing out of hate and not true humor. Colbert turns ideology on its ear with his spot-on satire, but his show's heart is pure comedy rather than scathing left-wing anger.

What is funny is the picture of the models the tee-shirt company uses to sell their wares. I'm guessing they are the daughters of the owner. They are blonde, blue-eyed, and holding weapons. They're like little Ann Coulters before they start starving themselves. The weapons they are holding is a Joycean epiphany, a little detail that illuminates the weird mix of fear, paranoia, violence and Aryan sex appeal that the right cling too. Keep those weapons handy, kids; the crazed, multi-kulti, gay socialists want to take you away and make you bake pot cookies for Medea Benjamin’s presidential campaign.

You Left the Bodies!!

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

—Emily Dickinson

According to the New York Times, cemeteries are raising money for upkeep in novel ways. The gravesites are throwing dinner parties, giving tours, charging dog owners, and my favorite, hosting Halloween parties. As a kid, I loved going to cemeteries and hanging out. They had an eerie sense that I liked, along with cool sculptures, a sense of history, and narratives—sometimes happy as an old couple buried together and sometimes sad, like a child’s tombstone with marble cherubs hovering about.

The cemeteries are also looking for future inhabitants. The article quotes a president of a cemetery board, “We want them to think, ‘Wow, I think I’d like to spend my eternity here,’ ” Ms. Page said of efforts to lure visitors. “It’s a way of saying, ‘We would love you to stay with us permanently.’ ”

One thinks of little Danny Torrance in The Shining meeting the ghosts of the slaughtered twins in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel: “Come play with us, Danny...forever and ever and ever!”

When I die, I’d rather be cremated and cast to the wind, which, according to the article, is how most Americans die, the cremation part anyway. Like golf courses, cemeteries seem like a waste of space, space that would serve better as a public park. You’re dead, so why should you care if you have an expensive headstone? Ah, but people are vain. Here’s another quotation from the article:

Forest Lawn in Buffalo spent $1.2 million to erect the Blue Sky mausoleum, a spare design by Frank Lloyd Wright, with 24 crypts from $125,000 to $300,000. Each crypt-owner will receive a Steuben glass sculpture of their eternal home-in-waiting. “It’s about exclusivity,” Mr. Dispenza of Forest Lawn said. “It’s about being one of the 24.”

What could be put towards housing for homeless goes to some schmuck’s corpse. Will your rotting wrist have a Rolex? Of course, this is not new. The great pyramids are testament to man’s vanity. And famous people’s graves are very popular with tourists. I have been to Père-Lachaise and seen Jim Morrison’s grave. It’s sad site indeed, with graffiti and broken wine bottles. And maybe someday, I’ll go to the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich to have a glass of Swiss white wine at James Joyce’s gravesite. A pointless exercise, really. A walking tour of Dublin would be a better way to pay respect to the master.

So cemeteries are for the living and not the dead. Wouldn’t a photograph work just as well? Old letters? Perhaps an old video? We don’t have to go as far as Faulkner’s Emily Grierson in “A Rose For Emily”, but there must be a better way to pay our respect and cherish a memory rather than the expensive and wasteful cemeteries. Didn’t Jessica Mitford teach us anything?

That said, I would love to go to a Halloween party in a cemetery. That would be too cool.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: Lush Lounge

I tried to hit a bar new to me called Decco, but, alas, it was closed on Tuesday. Everyone needs a day off but Tuesday? Tuesday is the new Friday. Everyone knows that. So my intrepid and, with the exception of me, unemployed group trudged through the Tenderloin looking for a drinking establishment.

We ended up at the Lush Lounge off of Polk and Post. Actually it’s called the Lush Lounge Martini Piano Bar, although in my haze I don’t recall a piano in the place. I feel like I’m in the seventies time period because of all the ferns in the place. There is also a love for classic movies. Pictures of classy movie stars like Audrey Hepburn line the wall. When I was there, Chinatown played on the televisions.

I suppose this place is a gay bar, being that Polk was the major gay area before the rise of Castro Street, but every time I’ve been here, it’s mostly straight folks sipping cocktails and gazing into each other’s eyes. It’s a very romantic place. The lights are low, the music murmurs, and the drinks are sweet.

Normally, I’m not into sweet drinks. I used to be. I used to concoct sweet libations that tasted like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but not anymore. But that night I tried the mango mojito they had for five bucks. Such a deal! And they were tasty. The pretty blonde bartender worked her magic and made quite the tasty concoction. They also offer such sweet boozy treats as Raspberry Truffle and Dreamsicle. You can harvest quite the nasty hangover here if you wanted to.

Outside drug-ravaged locals would walk by and gaze into the bar. The occasional cop siren would blare. It’s a weird neighborhood. Even though the neighborhood is gentrifying, there are still many immigrants and homeless and Charles Bukowski types. Then, a couple of blocks up is Russian Hill, where its well-heeled population of white-collar types live and drink and eat. Even though Russian Hill is a slight incline from here, if the hill reflected social levels, then you be staring up a cliff wall outside of the Lush Lounge. But such is the city.

One of these days I should try a dry martini here. See how they do it. But I think the best use for Lush Lounge is an after-dinner desert drink. If a Lemon Drop doesn’t start the night right, than your night will not take flight.

It's an American Dream...Includes Indians Too

The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love is upon us, and the retrospective articles are appearing. Joel Selvin is writing a series of articles for the SF Chronicle. Selvin is a good journalist, and although it's hard to capture the zeitgeist of that time within the confines of a newspaper article, he does a good job. The Summer of Love was centered on the Haight neighborhood. It occurred one year before I was born, so all I have is the memory of the folks who were there. But I see what's become of the Haight, and I know modern hippies. Time has not been kind to either.

Of course, the Summer of Love was a media construct that died even before it started. As a rule of thumb, if you are reading about a happening in the media, it's generally dead. Such is the nature of the hip and cool: ethereal wisps that fall apart in your hands. The earlier groovy folks of the pre-67 Haight were replaced by something much more American. Selvin puts it this way:

But they didn't turn out to be the literate beatniks and poetic artists who had come out earlier. These kids were squalid, ragged castoffs and, as they crowded the sidewalks of Haight Street night and day, they came to be known as street people.

Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead says in his own mixed-metaphor way, “We would come together for celebrations and stuff like that, and it was a lot of fun. But starting around June, the creativity of the scene was starting to be piled over by just having to batten down the hatches, bar your doors and windows 'cause there were speed freaks on the street.”

Good old speed. Invented by the Germans and beloved by certain Sci-Fi novelists to marathon sex tweakers. And it’s safe to say those speedy street people are still on the Haight. I’m sure the original tweaks are dead, but young ones take their place. They sit on the sidewalk with their dreadlocks and puppies and ragged army clothes asking for spare change, hitting on the yuppie chicks and generally smelling less than sweet. I can’t say they are hippies. They resemble Mad Max Thunderdome desert rats. None of the ideas of revolution and utopia sweep their minds.

The Haight itself is now one big shopping mall. You won’t find real hippies, but for a steep price you can dress like one. Don’t get me wrong, I like the street. It has nice bars and restaurants, and Milk has some good Hip Hop shows, but there is not much life in the place when the sun goes down and the shoppers leave.

And the hippies that I’ve known in my life don’t really follow the ideals of their elders. They are left-wing, but most of them are not active in politics. They are attracted to pot and music. You would hope for some laid back and passionate guys, literate beatniks and poetic artists, but instead you have neurotic stoners.

Maybe there never was the perfect ideal, only pale shadows, but the general ideas of the counterculture were great. Freedom and equality, love and forgiveness, art and sensuality are all ideals to live up to, but it takes more than a joint and a flowery shirt. If the Summer of Love teaches anything, it teaches that we keep trying for utopias, even if they crash like a tweaker after a three-day binge.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: Bay to Breakers

King Claudius: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet: Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.

I've ran the Bay to Breakers four times, and every time I tell myself I'm going to walk it and enjoy the party. So I did it this year. It was a glorious day and my pale Irish skin cooked in the sun. But it was worth it. Bay to Breakers is another great reason to live in San Francisco.

I thought about dressing up, but in the end I just wore jeans and a cool dragon shirt. My roommate and I met some friends and walked over to Hayes Hill. Although the race starts at eight in the morning, we didn't arrive until ten. The race was all walkers and partyers at that point. I saw the usual naked people and Elvises. So many Elvises. The guy has been dead for 30 years, and people are still dressing up like him. In our group, we had a Where Is Waldo?, runing of the bulls runner, and some girls wearing dirndls. The crowd was filled with pirates and catapillars and wacky seventies clothing and word puns like black-eye peas. Frat guys pushed kegs up the hill. Occasionally, they would pick up a girl and have her drink from the tap while hanging upside down.

On Divisidero, a house party was filled with Elvises who stood on the roof dancing. There were playing The Who's "Baba O'Riley" on the stereo. I thought everyone would shout out "They're all wasted!!" with the music, but only I did. I guess I'm old. I got separated from my group, and took a small nap in the grass. Very pleasant indeed. I then wandered to the polo fields and watched Cracker play. There are a wonderful, boozy bar band. David Lowery's scratchy voice sounded like an old friend to me, although it was strange seeing this band in the early morning.

I met up with the group at their place in the Lower Haight. I sat in the sun and gave my face a great red glow. I made it in to work today. Although I'm fried on the inside and outside, I regret nothing. Summer is here.

Breathless and Paralyzed

I sit here, paralyzed at the keyboard. I'm trying to connect the dots of existentialism. But instead of making a leap of faith towards god, or becoming an ubermench, or being nauseated by a tree root, or embracing Marxism as the solution, I'm barely moving.

I watched Jean-Luc Godard's À Bout de Souffle, otherwise known as Breathless, last night. Besides being the usual French tale of love and death sans plot, it was full of dialogue such as:

"I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy."

"I'm tired. I'm going to die."

"When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other."

Godard's existential dialogue is similar to Ingmar Bergman's work. To my contemporary ear, they sound cliché and pretentious. They've also been widely parodied. Woody Allen's comedy, Love and Death, turns this type of dialogue into a great joke:

Russian gentleman: So who is to say what is moral?
Sonja: Morality is subjective.
Russian gentleman: Subjectivity is objective.
Sonja: Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality.
Russian gentleman: Not as an essential extension of ontological existence.
Sonja: Can we not talk about sex so much?

I can only appreciate existentialism through art. As brilliant as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre are, their writing doesn't create empathy. Even Sartre's plays are like the dialogue of Breathless: interesting, but not empathetic. But the literary approaches are wonderful, Albert Camus' The Stranger, Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, and, for me, John Barth's The End of the Road not only illuminate existentialism, but they bring it home to me. Especially the idea of paralysis.

James Joyce talked of Irish paralysis in Dubliners, but he saw it as an Irish response to the repression of religion, England, and provincialism. The existentialists see paralysis as alienation from being authentic. We can't be authentic because we identify ourselves through other people's eyes. When one realizes that everything is subjective according to a group belief and not our own, we become paralyzed by the thought that nothing matters. Nihilsm, really.

I read that Beckett would lie in bed all day. When Jacob Homer, in Barth's End of the Road, sits paralyzed in a train station for a full day, I fully empathized. I feel that paralysis myself, especially working in a corporate environment. This is a go-go world, where the powerful people are nonstop 24/7/365 getting things done. And when those things are done, there are more things to do. For me, pushing paper is hardly an incentive to get out of bed. Homer Simpson solves this dilemma by posting pictures of his daughter at his desk. I don't have children, nor expect any soon. And I'm not sure children can stop existential paralysis. The only thing that can bring action is boredom and sex. Boredom is the lack of interest for a restless mind and sex is a basic drive. So I guess the key to life is boredom and sex. I have to admit, I've never been bored by sex, and I will definitely get out of bed for it. Although it's better in bed.

Two Constants in Life: Death & Taxes

Jerry Falwell is dead. He is not in heaven and he is not in hell since they don't exist. All he has is his rotting corpse and the history that he left behind. Falwell is known for creating the "Moral Majority" and being a leader in right-wing religious activism. The terminology is incorrect, for right-wing and religious shouldn't go together. They are an oxymoron. And Falwell exemplifies this more than anyone.

Back in the sixities, when many church activists were battling for civil rights, Falwell stayed away. This is from the New York Times obituary:

“Preachers are not called to be politicians, but soul winners” he said in a sermon entitled “Ministers and Marchers” in March 1964. “If as much effort could be put into winning people to Jesus across the land as is being exerted in the present civil rights movement, America would be turned upside down for God.”

A cop out for sure, and I think the real reason he didn't lift a finger for civil rights was most of his followers were Southern white folk, who if not racist were satisfied with the status quo. And he most likely was satisfied too. But when other groups wanted rights—women, homosexuals—then he became political. It is also worth noting that around the same time, the early seventies, he was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's interesting that since he started heavily influencing the Republican party that his tax-free empire has not been investigated.

It's no secret that he hates gays and liberals. He said the antichrist is Jewish, and obviously has a dim view of Islam. A hypocritical bigot in a churchman's clothes is not hard to find here in America, but his ascendancy shows the real problem: lack of taxes. When religious organizations start to pass certain income levels, they need to be regulated and taxed. This includes The Catholic Church, Scientology, Evangelicals, and even my mother's rather benign Presbyterian Church. In any society money equals power, and power like than needs to be kept in check. Shouldn’t these funds go to roads and schools rather than evangelical colleges with their limited education? Shouldn’t they should go to our army rather than the election of the numbskulls who start wars?

Any politician who would tax religious organizations would face incredible opposition; the people who prosper from these unregulated money streams will fight tooth and nail. But forget about saving souls, who will save our country?

H. E. Double Toothpicks

Pope Benedict XVI is traveling through South America, denouncing Marxism, Capitalism, abortion, gay marriages, and other affronts to the waning power of the Catholic Church. I don't care what Pope Ratso Rizzo says, but I did see a reference to an earlier speech he gave in March. In that earlier speech, he confirmed that Hell is an actual place. The London Times says the pope stated, "Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanize the faithful. He also noted, like Milton does in Paradise Lost, that "God had given men and women free will to choose whether 'spontaneously to accept salvation...the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind.'"

Of course, Hell has been used by the Church for centuries to keep the faithful in line. James Joyce uses this for great effect in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. Young Stephen Dedalus is awakening to the sexual urges in his body. The priests are well aware of the urges the students are going through, so they take them on a retreat. During the retreat the priests give a sermon on hell. It goes on for many pages. Here is an excerpt just on the smell of hell:

“—The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that, as saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this world, that pure element, becomes foul and unbreathable when it has been long enclosed. Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.”

I have no doubt that in Ratboy's eyes, I am condemned to hell. I do not accept Jesus as my savior and I certainly do not believe in the Catholic Church. Plus I'm for abortion and gay rights. Hey... did someone turn on a heater? Does it feel hot in here?

Of course, the pope isn't the only one to invoke hell. When I went looking for his comments on hell, I found some evangelical websites proclaiming the last pope is in hell because he wasn't evangelical. I used to think Hell would be more fun, y’know, like when Billy Joel sings, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. / The Sinner are much more fun." But now I'm thinking hell is filled with all these religious nitwits and there is no heaven. For me, personally, when you die, you finally get to sleep in, and that's all I ever wanted.

If you still feel you might end up in hell, check out other visions of hell:

You're all damned! Damned! Do you ever stop to think what that word means? No, you don't. It means endless, horrifying torment! It means your poor, sinful bodies stretched out on red-hot gridirons, in the nethermost, fiery pit of hell and those demons mocking ye while they waves cooling jellies in front of ye. You know what it's like when you burn your hand, taking a cake out of the oven, or lighting one of them godless cigarettes? And it stings with a fearful pain, aye? And you run to clap a bit of butter on it to take the pain away, aye? Well, I'll tell ye, there'll be no butter in hell! (Amos Starkadder from Cold Comfort Farm)

Now the d and the a and the m and the n and the a and the t and the i-o-n
Lose your face, lose your name / Then get fitted for a suit of flame
(Squirrel Nut Zippers, “Hell”)

Hell
Hell is for hell
Hell is for hell
Hell is for children
(Pat Benatar “Hell is for Children”)

And I leave with a link for a quiz. It tells you what level of Dante's hell you'll end up in. I ended up in the Heretic's City of Dis, the 6th level.

Museum Guitars

At a public auction, a Stradivarius violin sold for $3,544,000. I don’t play violin, but supposedly the sound of a Stradivarius would be like Jesus giving you a back massage. He does have awfully big hands. On the more proletarian front, a 1959 Gibson Les Paul can go for $400,000. You could trade one Stradivarius for seven Les Pauls. But still almost half a million dollars is a bit high for the average musician. The sound of a Les Paul is a nice fat tone made very popular by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Tom Scholz of Boston. In fact, Scholz’s distinct tone is how I think of Les Pauls. They are forever trapped as the guitar solo in “More Than a Feeling.” God rest Bradley Delp.

Not only did these guy perfect a sound that sold the Les Pauls, as Hendrix sold the Fender Stratocaster, but they also guaranteed the exorbitant price. Being that most musicians are poor or at least under paid, few of them can afford a vintage guitar. The rich rock star is one percent of all musicians, probably less, with today’s splintered music market. So who is buying these guitars at Christies’ auctions? Obviously, people who can afford a guitar for half a million and still make rent—people who made money in tech or stocks or inheritance and grew up idolizing guitar heroes.

The guitar has value other than its inherent sound; it has history attached to it. Much in the same way a first edition book or a rare stamp has perceived value. Of course, value has its ugly side. When Jerry Garcia died, he left his custom-made guitars to his luthier, Doug Irwin. Irwin hurt himself in a car accident and, to raise money, wanted to auction off the guitars. The Grateful Dead organization, ever-protective over Dead merchandise (and ever-exploitive, have you seen Grateful Red, the non-alcoholic wine endorsed by the Dead, shesh!) threatened legal action saying the guitar was the band’s property and not Garcia’s to give away.

The band wanted to put the guitar in a planned GD museum and didn’t want it hanging in some rich deadhead’s wall. Either way the guitar would have just been hanging on the wall. The Dead settled with Irwin and he sold two of his guitars for 1.74 million dollars. Don’t cry for the Dead, though. They never built a museum, but they did sell some of his other guitars just last week, making $1.1 million for three guitars and other memorabilia. Not bad for some old acid heads, huh? I think the Dead might even have some other revenue streams too. Now, these guitars are too expensive to play. Now they sit protected and quiet.

If Pete Townsend and punk taught us anything, it is fuck it; break the fucking thing; it’s just a tool, easily replaceable. Not true, but at its heart, its very true. What matters is not the historical value, but the talent of the pickers and players. I’d rather sit around a campfire and hear a drunken fool play “Wild Thing” than marvel at a Stradivarius behind a bullet-proof plastic wall.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: Barclays

Before band practice, I'll meet my drummer at a sports bar/pub called Barclays off of College Avenue on the border of Oakland and Berkeley. Barclays is in a sub-basement, but it is not dark or cave-like. It has wide windows and a large front patio. Inside is a nice dark wood bar, and mirrors give the place an illusion of space. It has the accoutrements of a pub: beer signs, beer banners, dartboards, empty bottles running along a shelf. It also has several televisions, always turned to some game. When I was there last, it was pool and a basketball game on the tellys.

Besides the bartenders, they employ young, good-looking women as servers. They are polite and suffer through my beergeek questions: "So where is this brewery located?" At its very heart, this is a neighborhood pub, and the cliental are locals. This being Berkeley, the locals are white, affluent left-wingers. I'm usually there in the early evening, so the age rage is in the thirties to fifties. I'm sure when the night goes on, a younger crowd inhabits the place. Down the street is student housing for UC Berkeley, so I assume students come too, if they can afford the $5 beer. Since this place serves food, a lot of families come in too. If they allowed dogs inside, then it would be a true pub.

And they do offer a good selection. I like that they concentrate on local brews. Northern California has some of the best microbreweries in the country, so it makes sense to offer local beers. Plus, up the street is Alice Water's place, whose motto is 40 miles or less for food supply delivery, so why not put that philosophy towards beer? The also serve the beer in a large English pint glass for $5, so it's not a bad deal. They have beer coins, in which you can have a discount of you buy the tokens in bulk. The food is good too, much better then the usual pub grub, and they serve it in large amounts.

Funny thing is I don't really like this place. I don't watch sports, so the televisions are a distraction. The families make it more of a restaurant than a bar. They only serve beer, which is limiting. They have a faithful local following, and the insular attitude makes me feel like a stranger. Although they play music faintly in the background, there is no jukebox and no live music. They close at midnight, which is pretty lame for a college town bar. I appreciate their love of beer and food, but the cons outweigh the pros. But I'm sure the yuppie dads who live in the hills are happy to have some place they can bring the kids, while they enjoy a great brew. It's just not for me.

Oh Camille, My Camille

I love reading Camille Paglia. I don’t agree with her opinions, but she can write and her opinions are so passionate, veering towards nutty, that I have to laugh. She has a column for Salon.com. She expounds on politics, pop culture, and current events. Basically anything she wants to. In fact it’s what I do with this blog, but she gets paid for it.

In her recent column, in reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings, she calls for more vocational training in high schools. I have no argument there; high schools need more money for everything. When I went to high school we had auto shop, wood shop, ceramics, art, other vocational classes. I assume they’ve been stripped away.

But what cracks me up is her prose. Here are some examples:

“…our present educational system is an insane pressure cooker, dangerous above all for boys, with their restless physical energy.”

“Age segregation by grade, in my opinion, is a mechanistic atrocity that spawns ruthless social cliques, who oppress and enrage the losers in the provincial pecking order.”

“We need to strip the elite aura from the claustrophobic "prestige" jobs in sterile corporate offices, where high salaries drug the worker clones from recognition of their own imprisonment and castration.”

Okay, I’m not quite sure if the educational system is the pressure cooker, perhaps the parents are the cause. Plus it is sexist to think that boys blow up with pressure with our physical energy. Granted more males kill than females, but I think mental instability is the source instead of gender. The VT Killer certainly didn’t care about grades; he was an English Major!

And I’m not sure age segregation causes ruthless social cliques, although I did love Heathers. But not as much as I love the term, “mechanistic atrocity.” Anymore high-falutin purple prose like that and Paglia will start resembling the crazy street people in my neighborhood.

Being that I work in a sterile corporate office, I have to say I recognize my own imprisonment and castration. But that’s probably because I have a very low salary.

I love you, Camille. I know you're gay, but you can whisper in my ear anytime.

I Believe in Miracles...You Sexy Thing

In the May 7th, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, there is an article about a Brazilian writer named Paul Coelho. Apparently, He has sold a zillion books worldwide, including the Alchemist, soon to be a major motion picture. I have not read Coelho, but according to the article he writes allegorical stories that really push upbeat, new-age, mystical beliefs. Coelho also writes self-help books, naturally. And he is quoted on Starbucks coffee cups:

"'Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure. Never forget your Personal Legend. Never forget your Personal Dream....'"

I don't have anything against self-help epigrams. If they make you feel better, who am I to judge? But the belief in miracles is what I have a problem with. Obviously, I am an atheist. Although that doesn't mean I'm not spiritual. I just happen to believe in humanity, more specifically in humanity's art. And art not only accepts tragedy and the pointlessness of life, it also celebrates it as a part of the binary of living. Joy and laughter being the other side of the binary. What happens when you start to believe in miracles, in gods and demons, you give up logic and accountability. And two recent news stories illustrate this point.

A Vegan couple was sentenced to life in prison for killing their six-week old baby. They fed their baby according to their beliefs that humans should not use anything made by or from an animal. The baby was fed soy milk and apple juice. Apparently, mother's milk falls under food made by animals. Vegans that I have met look sallow and malnourished, so it's no surprise that a vegan diet would kill a child. The parents believed that their Spartan diet would sustain a baby: basically they believed in a miracle. Now they are living a nightmare.

Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Iraq this week. He went there to jumpstart the progress in making a democracy flourish. Cheney's message to the Iraqis is, “We’ve all got challenges together. We’ve got to pull together. We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time." Now that should be on a Starbuck's cup.

Of course, the appearance of Cheney in Iraq will not trigger the miracle of peace and prosperity. If Cheney believes this, then he is more deluded than the Vegan couple. The whole administration believed in their Neocon miracle, but like most miracles, it was not to be. But once you state your belief in miracles it's hard to back down. You just keep hoping for something. In Cheney's case, he thinks legislation will bring together the Shiites, Sunnis, and the Kurds. Now that would be a true miracle.

The big difference between Cheney and the Vegan couple is Cheney has killed thousands of people with his deluded belief, while the Vegan couple killed one. They both should be imprisoned. But that would entail a miracle.

We're Gonna Twisty Twisty Twisty

Last night, while lying on my couch, prostrate from the heat, I watched Beach Party, the first Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello beach movie. The movie is high camp and very entertaining. I caught the beginning where Dick Dale and the Del Tones are jamming at a beach joint, and everybody is dancing. Perhaps it was the heat, but I was transfixed by the dancing. The movie came out in 1963, well before the Beatles flew into JFK Airport, but a couple of years after Chubby Checker released his hit song, "The Twist". I make this distinction because the cats and chicks in this flick are twisting it up.

The Twist is probably the most simple dance move you can do. Here's a quotation from a member of Checker's band—I got off of Wikipedia, so it's who knows of its veracity—but it captures the dance perfectly: "It's like putting out a cigarette with both feet, and wiping your bottom with a towel, to the beat of the music." It also resembles convulsions, at least in Beach Party it does. Now days, it's a dance that no one consciously does, but there are some moves that still are around. In the movie, a girl with tight slacks shakes her booty so quickly, that I was reminded of hip hop videos in which women with generous backsides shake it like an earthquake (girthquake?). Check out the dance scene in the second to the last panel of Moving Pictures on your left.

When I played in a cover band in the late eighties, we would whip out “Twist & Shout”, and that always brought people out on the dance floor. We played to mostly white crowds and The Twist is so basic that drunk white people have no trouble getting up with the get down. I think it is because they never have to move their feet. All they have to do is shimmy from side to side. With booze, the shimming becomes a lot less self-conscious. I'm not making of fun of those people; I'm no great dancer, although I do like to dance. I'm sure our contemporary dance movies will look ridiculous in 40 years, but in the end, dancing is about connecting with music in a physical way, so who gives a rat’s ass what you look like?

The Tipping Point

I bought the DVD, V for Vendetta and watched it again the other night. V has all the things I love about movies. In no particular order:

Good acting. Especially, Hugo Weaving, who had to act without facial gestures. Even though the ancient Greeks started theater with the actors wearing masks, drama these days has dropped the masks, unless you’re a psycho killer or a superhero. Natalie Portman does a good job too and with a good English accent.

Good writing. The plot is convoluted, but I always like trying to figure out a convoluted plot. Plus, there are lots of literary references and that always starts the serotonin flowing in me. If you want to do a comparison of good and bad dialogue, line up a scene of Portman from this film with any of her scenes from The Star Wars movies. You will see a huge difference.

Things that make you go hmm. Even though the graphic novel this movie was based on was written during the Thatcher years, the references to Bush are clear. A good work of art should always reflect human thought no matter what the time period. V talks about words and their power, and how institutions will use words to consolidate their own power. Bush and the Republican party use words in ingenious ways, especially since they are so well trained to repeat the talking points and never veer off. Of course, when you keep repeating the same lie when the truth keeps popping up, you start to look like a fool or even insane. Dick Cheney has a propensity to keep saying these lies so often that he really should be tested for mental infirmity.

But the main question that this film brings up for me is how much is enough for revolution? What does it take for people to say no more and take to the street? I’m not advocating revolution, and I’m hardly a street-fighting man. The dystopia of V is pretty bad with their secret police, curfews, and poisoning of their own people. America is not V’s England. We have the worst president in power since Nixon, but it’s certainly not bad enough to start a revolution. But since Republicans seem to love power over everything else except money, what would happen if Bush tried to grab power indefinitely? Or any president for that matter? Is it possible in America for a coup to happen? And if it did happen would Americans rise up and fight, or would we be complacent and stay at home, watching DVDs? What is the tipping point for China, Burma, Iran, North Korea, or any other totalitarian country today? What would be our tipping point? Hmm.

Slouching Toward Euphoria: Moby Dick

Moby Dick is another neighborhood bar. It’s a gay bar but has the feel of a regular pub. The building has long windows that open out to the street. A nice long wood bar gives it the classic saloon look. A slight upper half second room has pool table, pinball games, and video games. Back in the seventies, the bar was called the Corner Grocery Bar, so I’m assuming it was a corner grocery in the sixties, but who knows? There are TVs all over the place, and they play music videos, usually dance music. I wonder if they had live music at one time; the upper part would have been a good stage, but live music in Castro is nonexistent. Hell, even in the whole city, live music is shrinking. Fun seems to be beating a retreat in this city, but that is for another post. I actually did see a singer with an acoustic guitar at the Moby Dick the other night. He was great and the place was packed. Maybe they’ll bring back live music to this neighborhood.

Behind the bar is an aquarium with two or three lonely fish swimming about. The tank has a lot of coral in it and rising up the bed of a coral is a mighty coral phallus. Those are pearls that were his eyes, and coral that was his cock. But if you want any reminding that you are in a gay bar, go to the men’s room. The bathroom has a low ceiling, dim red light, soft music playing, troughs only, and mirrors that line the troughs. Yes, no privacy for your private parts. Now, for me, this is a little disconcerting. I’ll admit I’m a tad pee shy. Probably stems from my time going to monster rock shows as a kid. Trying to pee in a trough in a packed stadium bathroom filled with drunken, hostile white trash put a block on my bladder. Now don’t get me wrong, if I have to go, I’ll use Moby Dick’s bathroom, but I do laugh nervously when I use their toilet.

But it is hard to not like this bar. They have a good beer selection; the prices are decent; the bartenders are pretty cool; and the cliental is mixed and relaxed. Weekends, the place is packed, but on the weekdays, there is room to move about. And despite its name, the bar has a lack of obsessive guys with peg legs. What’s not to like?

My Deconstructed Humps

Deconstruction is a dense and difficult theory to learn, and to read texts by its creator, Jacques Derrida, can be compared to driving a tractor with a heap of sleeping pills coursing through your veins. The basic definition is texts are unstable because of the multiple meanings attached to every word, and because of this instability a text’s meaning can be subverted, which means a text’s meaning can be changed 180 degrees from what it supposedly says. That’s still pretty vague, but what can you do? Texts are unstable.

An excellent way to understand Deconstruction is with music. A musician can cover a song and deconstruct its meaning very easily. Jimi Hendrix’s version of the “Star Spangled Banner” is a superb example. He doesn’t even sing the words and yet he takes our militant national anthem and makes it into a protest song. How does he do this? At the climax of the song, the part with the highest notes, the part that most singers hate because it is so difficult to sing, Hendrix adds sound effects. The line is “And the rocket’s red glare / The bombs bursting in air.” After this line, Hendrix imitates a bomb screaming down from the air and blowing up. You can hear the shrapnel dispersing and destroying all in its way. What is supposed to be rousing and proud sounds terrifying and painfully real.

Another example is making the rounds on YouTube. Alanis Morissette covers The Black Eye Peas' song, “My Humps”. (See Youtube for vids.) The Peas’ version is a light dance track with repetitive rhymes of a woman stating that her humps bring her cash and drive the men crazy. It’s a lark and fun to dance to, but there isn’t much underneath nor is there supposed to be any deeper meanings. But then Morissette covers it with a bare piano and turns in into a mournful, bitter song. She also covers the video, making fun of the Peas’ posturing, but also has a shot of her crying with her makeup smearing like Courtney Love or Tammy Fay Baker. So she not only deconstructs the song but the video as well. Good job, Ms. Morissette. Derrida is smiling, as he shovels more coal for his satanic overlord.

The Fang of the Green Fairy

Absinthe will now be legally sold in the U.S. Sort of. According to this New York Times article, a brand called, Lucid will be made without the Wormwood ingredient, thujone. That might be beside the point, since not much thjone is found in real absinthe, and it's poisonous properties weren't that bad anyway. The banning of absinthe was one of the many instances of a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing, that is to say, a panic with no basis in reality, but that hasn't stopped our lawmakers before. I hate to agree with the batshit-crazy libertarians, but we do have a nanny state.

Anyway, Lucid will have a "a slightly cleaner, crisper taste than its European peers." Which sounds like a wimped out version. I wish we didn't have a propensity for drinks that taste either like nothing or a mouthful of sugar. Lucid will go $60 a bottle. Because of the ban, absinthe is ridiculously expensive. I think I prefer the European versions, which you can buy legally over the internet. If you have never tried Absinthe, I recommend it; the high makes you feel quite thoughtful, lucid perhaps.

The Sweet Sin of Gin

The New York Times had a gin comparison in their dining section today. Evidently they tried eighty gin martinis between four people. I like those odds. But even better was this well-made point:

“Before we discuss the findings, though, we need to clear up a little matter. It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail.”

Hallelujah, brother, Testify! I hate to be redundant when ordering, but with the vodka craze—that thankfully is ebbing—I have to order a “gin” martini, so I won’t get the bastardized kind. Luckily gin is coming around again, the NY Times article lists a great many that I have not tried. But I will, oh yes, I will. First one I will try is Plymouth, which they think is the best for a martini.

A side note: I’m very cautious when ordering a martini. I go by a couple of rules.

Really good-looking bartender = I order a beer. Usually these guys and gals are hired to be eye candy, and have not learned the finesse of mixing. There are always exceptions, but beware.

Also, Irish/English/Scottish pubs = I order a beer or a scotch. When in Rome, or Dublin…

Dance clubs = puh-leeze; they don’t even carry cocktail glasses. It’s beer or a vodka and cranberry juice.

The best place for martinis are hotel bars, lounges, or punk clubs with rockabilly bartenders. Hotel bars with their starched shirts and inflated prices are pretentious but they do mix well, especially if there is an old timer behind the bar. Lounges can be hit or miss, but at least they try. Rockabilly bartenders are very proud of their martinis and they are usually great.

Even so bartenders still shake a martini. I don’t know about bruising, but I don’t want to see ice shards in my martini. A martini should be pure, like a calm lake. It is a preview of how my soul will be after the imbibing. Drinking is not just taste and smell; it is visual (and it is aural when you clink someone’s glass in a toast.). See, don’t get me started on martinis. Shesh.

Slouching toward Euphoria: The Edge

This will be the first post documenting the bars of San Francisco and the Bay Area. The moments in a bar are fleeting and often forgotten for obvious reasons, but I think they are an important part of humanity. That sounds grandiose, but they are places where people can ease themselves away from the pain of life and show another part of themselves. Sometimes that other part can be bad news, and that is well documented—the alcoholic’s descent into hell is always an Oscar winner—but there are good times in bars, and I hope to scrape off a telling detail or two.

The closest bar to my flat is The Edge, a bear bar that has been around with various names since the eighties. I’ve only been here once since I moved here. It is small with big open windows and a smaller back room with a pinball machine and video games. The upper wall is lined with pictures of naked porn stars, a surprising rarity in the Castro. I suspect that bars used to be raunchier back before AIDs decimated this neighborhood, but I can’t verify that claim. The cliental is older, hairy gay men: bears, although that doesn’t necessarily apply to all who drink there.

Perhaps because the cliental is older, The Edge is packed between six and eight p.m., and then it is relatively quiet after that. The patrons spill out on the sidewalk or gaze out from its open widows. The drinks are cheap and strong. They play classic rock, a change from the usual disco/techno/screaming diva music heard elsewhere. Walking home late at night, I passed the bar as Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” was blasting from inside. I dug it.

Another time, as I coming home from work on the MUNI train, I spied two skinheads. They were dressed exactly the same. Pale green jackets, tight grey camouflage pants, Vans sneakers, and shaved heads. One was about ten years younger, but that was the only difference. I wondered why someone would want to resemble another person so mirror-perfect, but perhaps they enjoyed the attention. They walked my route home, and sure enough they went into The Edge. It was early, so it was prime time, and they entered the packed bar in order to be admired and to lose oneself in the crowd of beards, bellies, and beer.